What does the image of the soldier crying mean to you, and does it mean something different the way Slate has used it? I am reminded that I was lambasted recently for crying, so my perceptions about the cultural meaning of crying are distorted right now. I'm biased toward righteously justifying the expression of humanity in liquid form. But I don't like Weisberg -- that longtime Bush foe -- appropriating the soldier's tears.

IN THE COMMENTS: The answer to my question -- "What does the image of the soldier crying mean to you?" -- there are lots of answers, but we may have settled on one: "It means that the artist watched too much TV during the 70s and can't think of an original way to express himself." And YouTube comes through again:

48 comments:

Crying that 3000 of his friends died and he might be next? Crying because Iraq is getting worse despite all the efforts? Crying because if he does get home, he will stuck somewhere in the lower class and may need foodstamps to eat? I have no idea.

They're in the desert, Ann. It's nothing more than some sand in his eye. He isn't wearing goggles, after all.

Wish that that were the reason, but I doubt it. The truly sad thing is to most of the soldiers I speak to (I was active duty for 9 years and still have many friends deployed) this doesn't represent them in the slightest. To a soldier, they are encouraged and their spirits and moral is high. This cartoon is more representative of the non-military person who doesn't support the effort.

I don't buy that this is what your tears did. Perhaps this is what you felt they were doing, but to appropriate some of the language you recently used-- your tears had daggers. They weren't an expression of humanity, they were an accusation that someone else lacked humanity.

I really like you, Ann. I just do not think that the whole affair with the Liberty Fund conference was handled well by a few folks, from the way I have seen it depicted by several of the posts on here and on Reason.

R2K said "Crying because if he does get home, he will stuck somewhere in the lower class and may need foodstamps to eat?" Typical of what libs/lefties think of the military men and women-that they are simpletons at the lowest rung of society.

Paul a'barge–A: it isn't the left that has hijacked the armed forces to peddle an agenda. B: yeah, go around calling Jews pigs. That's always a way to elevate the debate.

Ann: First of all, poguemahone is right, it is an artistic representation of a generic soldier, that's not appropriate a soldier's tears. Second, why should it matter if Weisberg is a "longtime Bush foe." Granted, In recent history, it has been Bush who uses troops to prop up his political image, but being Republican doesn't grant him exclusive license to the troops.

Jacob Weisberg's problem is that Jacob Weisberg chose to so severely damage his own professional reputation when he insisted on publicly printing, year after year, intentional misquotations and apparent fabrications in order to satisfy Jacob Weisberg's personal private need for revenge that anything Jacob Weisberg writes on any subject today is highly suspect, and inherently unbelievable no matter how mundane.

If Jacob Weisberg were to allege something as patently obvious as the fact that the sun rose in the east this morning, it would still be wise to demand independent verification from an independent source.

Given that, it seems to me that the intelligent thing to do is to not bother with anything Jacob Weisberg writes in the first place. It is just not worth the time to fact check someone so intellectually dishonest.

Pity Jacob Weisberg. The joke he's flogged for years turns out to be on him after all.

Jacob Weisberg's problem is that Jacob Weisberg chose to so severely damage his own professional reputation when he insisted on publicly printing, year after year, intentional misquotations and apparent fabrications in order to satisfy Jacob Weisberg's personal private need for revenge that anything Jacob Weisberg writes on any subject today is highly suspect, and inherently unbelievable no matter how mundane.

If Jacob Weisberg were to allege something as patently obvious as the fact that the sun rose in the east this morning, it would still be wise to demand independent verification from an independent source.

Given that, it seems to me that the intelligent thing to do is to not bother with anything Jacob Weisberg writes in the first place. It is just not worth the time to fact check someone so intellectually dishonest.

Pity Jacob Weisberg. The joke he's flogged for years turns out to be on him after all.

Jacob Weisberg's problem is that Jacob Weisberg chose to so severely damage his own professional reputation when he insisted on publicly printing, year after year, intentional misquotations and apparent fabrications in order to satisfy Jacob Weisberg's personal private need for revenge that anything Jacob Weisberg writes on any subject today is highly suspect, and inherently unbelievable no matter how mundane.

If Jacob Weisberg were to allege something as patently obvious as the fact that the sun rose in the east this morning, it would still be wise to demand independent verification from an independent source.

Given that, it seems to me that the intelligent thing to do is to not bother with anything Jacob Weisberg writes in the first place. It is just not worth the time to fact check someone so intellectually dishonest.

Pity Jacob Weisberg. The joke he's flogged for years turns out to be on him after all.

Not sure if everyone has seen these videos of the US military in Iraq or not, but they are pretty amazing: Hopefully our 'surge' will not include too many of these types...http://minor-ripper.blogspot.com/2006/12/winning-hearts-and-minds-part-three.html

By following the link and reading the comic page from which the pic was taken I thought that it meant sacrifice, loyalty, and soldiers are human.By reading the comments here I find that I'm too stupid to follow the reasoning here so I'm going back to reading comics.bye

Without getting into the merits of his comment at all, this is flat out disingenuous and despicable. He called a particular person a name. He did not call an entire ethnic group a name. And trying to smear him with the smell of antisemitism in this manner is reprehensible.

"Compared with the complex, well-researched soldiers' stories in Garry Trudeau's Doonesbury, though, Combat Zone feels flat. The book's soldiers are stock characters—the country boy, the intellectual, the hard-bitten commander—and casualties are kept to a minimum. The comic ends with patriotic martyrdom, as a soldier throws himself onto a live grenade to save his comrades (and a few wide-eyed Iraqi children, of course). "Kulzinski went out with his boots on," says his teary CO after the battle ends, and offers the movie-ready eulogy shown here. It's easy to imagine real soldiers hooting at such squareness."

We can be confident that Jacob Weisberg had absolutely no role in selecting the artwork that appears on the Slate homepage. It is quite clear that Slate has a graphics department for that kind of thing.

Secondly, the Indian commercial is bogus. They hardly left the land untouched. They started prairie fires all the time, because it gave the Buffalo fresh grass. They thinned the forests to grow the kinds of trees they wanted, especially nut trees and oaks. They often killed more than they needed and left the carcasses to rot.

But mostly they just didn't have the technology to produce things they could just throw away. If they had had newspapers, soda cans, and packaging, they'd probably had litter problems too.

Best darn wags in town! By the way, Indians used to stampede herds of buffalo over cliffs just to get the meat of a few. They would start prairie fires to stampeded buffalo without a care for all the little birdies and gophers burned up in their little dens and nests...la la

Listen, i've serve twice in the BIG SAND BOX as a scout and yes i've shed tears both times. It doesn't mean that i am weak but when you see the destruction of war first hand its not a easy feeling. I've lost very close friends to IED(Improvise Explosive Device) and also my wife to be and if any man or woman who could take loses like that and not shed tears then yes you should put in the same category of our fearless leader in the oval office. The picture means he lost someone he'll never see again for you right wingers

go to youtube.com, search 'bring him home santa' and click the first result. at the end, there will be a clip of a child about 5-6 years-old, in school, getting out of his chair, crying, and running toward his father who is standing in the doorway holding his arms open. its just so touching.

veteran, thanks for your comments and your perspective. It is so important to consider that we ought not to judge what we have not experienced. I'm so sorry for your loss.

Of course soldiers cry. What a backwards society that crying is automatically associated with failure, weakness, or manipulation. I've seen so many "crying soldier" images circulating around the internet- the reason you don't like this one is because it's from a liberal publication instead of a conservative one. If there had been a "support our fallen brothers and sisters, give thanks to our troops who are sacrificing themselves daily for our freedom", etc etc- you'd all love the silly thing. I think there are WAY more important things to be discussing this day.